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For a very long time, we've all wanted Hasbro to release episodes outside of the United States in a legal fashion so that more people could support them.

As it turns out, citing a recent email from a Hasbro representative, Hasbro releasing episodes before they are aired on the respective country's television networks infringes on the deals made with those networks. There is a holdback period as well- a period in which a network can bar sales of DVDs and other downloads of the episode for a while after it has been aired.

You can find the full text of the email below the break, names removed.

This goes a long way to explaining why legal downloads of the show are scarce outside the United States. Unfortunately it also means that we just have to be patient. Legal systems are picky, finicky things, especially when they have to work together.

For the meantime, we'll need to stick to Youtube. It's not ideal, but so far it's worked fairly well.

Dear [REDACTED],

Thanks for your email and your interest in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. We understand your frustration but the reason Hasbro can’t make the new episodes available outside of the US on YouTube/iTunes/DVDs etc. is that it would infringe on the deals made with TV networks outside of the US. A TV network would be very upset and could in some cases have a suit against Hasbro if an episode were viewed in their market for free or even via a DVD before it aired on their network. And some TV network deals also include a certain "holdback" time period on when an episode airs on their network vs. how long it would be OK for it to be aired/available elsewhere.

Unfortunately this also means, that for the time being you need to be patient. At the moment we don’t have any deals in place with Finnish broadcasters but we are working on it. But fingers crossed that we at some point will be able to offer episodes both localized and original on iTunes in Europe as well, since we would love to be able to provide this opportunity to all of our fans.